ABOUT THE PROJECT

This Defender was a commissioned bespoke build by a client who just missed out on one of our other builds. The brief was simple: a Blue Defender with classic touches.

We started with a 1996 Arles Blue County Defender from Milan, Italy. It was an Land Rover Special Vehicle that had a factory installed Air Conditioner – a rarity at that vintage.

The base vehicle was in rough cosmetic shape, but otherwise solid mechanically. It would require a complete body off, nut & bolt restoration to get it to the desired specification.

First things first, having stripped the interior, we had to lift the body off the frame into a custom built a cart to move  the shell so that we could do the body work at the same time as the chassis and drivetrain rebuild.